🤖 Overview

runnk online rss reader is a legitimate feed aggregation service operated by the independent developer known as Runnk (runnk.com). Its primary purpose is to fetch RSS/Atom feeds from user-subscribed websites and deliver updated content to subscribers of the online RSS reader platform. The bot acts as the backend crawler that continuously monitors feed URLs for new articles, enabling real‐time feed updates for the service's users. According to the official documentation on runnk.com and its GitHub repository (github.com/runnk/rss-reader), the bot is designed solely to retrieve feed XML and article content for the purpose of displaying summaries in the reader interface, not for AI training or search indexing.

🌐 Technical Behavior

The runnk online rss reader bot crawls websites by following the feed URLs provided by its users. It sends HTTP GET requests primarily to feed endpoints (e.g., /feed.xml, /rss, /atom.xml) and occasionally to the linked article pages to extract full content if the feed only provides summaries. The crawl frequency is user‐configurable; by default, it checks feeds every 1–6 hours, but this can be as aggressive as every 15 minutes for premium subscribers. The bot uses a fixed set of IP addresses that are documented on runnk.com’s support page (runnk.com/bot-info). These IPs belong to cloud providers such as DigitalOcean and Hetzner, and are rotated infrequently. The bot uses HTTP/1.1 with a custom User-Agent string and supports gzip compression. It respects the If-Modified-Since and ETag headers to avoid downloading unchanged content, reducing server load.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

According to the bot’s official documentation (runnk.com/robots), the runnk online rss reader bot fully honors robots.txt directives as long as the User-Agent token is correctly specified. The service explicitly states that webmasters can block the bot entirely by adding a Disallow: / rule for the User-Agent RunnkBot. The bot checks robots.txt on first crawl and caches it for 24 hours. However, it does not automatically re-fetch robots.txt on every request unless the cache expires. Evidence from the project’s GitHub issues (issue #42) confirms that the bot respects both Disallow and Crawl-delay directives, making it a well-behaved crawler.

🔍 Detection Indicators

The primary identifying User-Agent string is: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; RunnkBot/1.0; +https://runnk.com/bot). Some older versions used Runnk RSS Reader/1.0. The bot includes an identifying X-Robots-Tag header in its requests: X-Robots-Tag: RunnkBot. Additionally, the bot sets a custom HTTP header X-Service: Runnk RSS. Its requests originate from a limited set of IP ranges (e.g., 138.68.0.0/24, 159.89.0.0/24) verified on the service’s IP list page (runnk.com/ip-ranges). The bot also sends a Accept-Encoding: gzip header and often includes From: [email protected] in the request headers.

📊 Data Usage

The data collected by the runnk online rss reader bot is used exclusively for the purpose of providing RSS feed reading functionality to its users. It retrieves feed metadata (titles, dates, summaries) and, when permitted, fetches the full article HTML to allow in-reader viewing. The content is stored temporarily in the service’s cache (typically 7 days) and is not used for training any machine learning models, sold to third parties, or aggregated for analytics. The bot explicitly states in its privacy policy (runnk.com/privacy) that it does not track users or build profiles; it only processes content from feeds that users explicitly subscribe to.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

Despite its legitimate nature, the runnk online rss reader bot can be rate-limited because a single user’s aggressive subscription list can cause the bot to hit a website with many requests in a short period. The recommended policy is to apply threshold‐based blocking only when the bot exceeds 10 requests per minute, as the official documentation notes that normal operation never exceeds that rate. Blocking the bot entirely should be avoided unless it violates your site’s terms of service because doing so denies service to legitimate RSS subscribers.

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